Slashdot Mirror
Smart Billboards
djdanlib writes "The New York Times ran this story Sunday about the Mobiltrak smart billboard system. It works by detecting what radio station you're listening to as you pass by a billboard, then displaying advertisements targeted at that station's demographic. It's kind of like a real-time Nielsen Ratings system for radio. And it's entirely passive, requiring no special hardware in your car - it receives the faint tuning signal generated by your radio." We've mentioned these before.
here
This sign doesn't react to what it detects. It simply logs what stations people are listening to, so that the advertiser on the board can look at that info and decide who to target during different parts of the day. It works exactly like Nielsen ratings. The info gets collected and people look at it to make decisions, it's not reacted to immediately.
I don't think that's how it works. The billboard displays an ad, it doesn't hijack your radio station.
According to the article, the billboard analyzes patterns to find out what ads to display at what time of day; it doesn't change for every car that comes down the road:
"Using the information collected by the Mobiltrak device, Future Ford knows that on weekdays that stretch of I-80 carries a lot of drivers who listen to country-and-western stations, so that's when the dealership advertises the Ford F-150, a popular pickup truck. Evening drivers, Mobiltrak has found, are more apt to listen to talk radio and adult contemporary, so they see ads for Tauruses and Escorts"
The parent is completely out of touch with mainstream society. "Who actually listens to the radio anymore?!" I guess the record labels can stop paying Top 40 stations to play their crap, seeing as how no one listens to them. I guess all those rap stations my friends listen to can fold, since their only remaining membership is luddites.
Yes, MP3 players are getting cheaper, but an iPod is sill $200, and every car built in the last 30 years has an AM/FM radio. Aside from just the weather, the news, and talk shows -- streaming, time sensitive content -- the radio offers the opportunity to hear new music.
You might disagree about the benifits of radio, but the fact is that most people don't own an MP3 player, and most of those who do still listen to the radio. "Who still listens to the radio?" On the freeway, the vast majority of people.
In the UK Clearchannel own most of the billboards not the radio stations.
;-)
If they start taking over radio stations wholesale they have a whole lot of advertisising space to push their wares.
and now they can selectivly push them on roads where their pentitration is low
sparkes
blog and junk
Your radio has a component in it (an oscillator) that vibrates at the frequency of the station you're listening to. This is "tuning" into the station. This vibration is what emits the signal.
Is this signal broadcasted back through your antenna or is this just a faint signal inside your radio and they have really good receivers in their billboards? Definitely a result of good receivers in the billboard. Though I think the antenna helps.
Has anybody tried to create a radio that doesn't emit this signal?
Not that I know of. I don't think it's really been a major issue worth pursuing in the consumer market. The best way to do it would probably be to shield the box. But since you've got to have an antenna linking the oscillator with the emag signal, you can never completely isolate it.
Is this only something with FM radio, or also with AM?
Both AM and FM. You've got to have an oscillator to tune into either one.
The key is that the frequency of the local oscillator varies, so if you can detect the output of the local oscillator, you can tell to what frequency the radio is tuned. I'm oversimplifying greatly, and the article I've referred to is a pretty rough overview - if you really want to know how this stuff works, you need to do some serious studying. :'}
A radio has a local oscillator, operating at 10.7 MHz above or below the tuned frequency for FM and 455 kHz (?) above below the tuned frequency for AM. When you mix two frequencies, the two original frequencies, and their sum and difference result. The radio mixes the local oscillator signal with the incoming signal to get 10.7 MHz for FM and 455 kHz for AM. The rest of the circuits in the radio are tuned to that frequency. Actually older radios didn't do this, they just had variable tuning circuits in every stage, necessitating multi-gang variable capacitors and such. I think this system operates by sensing the (frequency - {10.7 MHz,455kHz} ) signals emitted by nearby radios.
This is the kind of idea that sounds cool on the surface, but can't really work out irl.
How many billboards have you driven past lately where you were the only one around in a car?
Even if it does some kind of averaging. What, you're going to average Howard Stern and NPR? Is the result going to be better than the vanilla demographic they have for that area anyway?
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
You are almost right, but not quite.
The way a modern superheterodyne radio works is like this:
You want to listen to a radio frequency at F1.
The radio creates a local oscillator (or LO) frequency of F2, such that abs(F2-F1) = F3, where F3 is a fixed, intermediate frequency (or IF). A common IF for FM radios is 10.7 MHz, and a common IF for AM radios is 455 kHz. By pulling the signal to a fixed frequency the rest of the radio's design can be better optimized and simpler.
Now, F2 can be either F1+F3 or F1-F3, it make little difference. So one way to confuse the system would be to retune the radio so that it uses "the other IF" - i.e. if the radio is using F2=F3+F1, retune the guts so that it uses F2=F1-F3.
Alternatively, replace the IF strip to change F2, and then retune the radio appropriately - if the sign's systems assume an IF of 10.7 MHz, and you are using an IF of 9.7 MHz, that will confuse the sign. The difficulty there is getting components designed for a non-standard frequency. If the radio is using the old "tuned slug" design this isn't so bad, but if the radio is using a crystal filter you are looking at custom crystals.
However, there is no need for the LO to be coupled to the world - the first stages of the radio can amplify the RF and decouple the first LO mixer from the world. It just takes a bit more work on the sheilding of the radio - you use a milled block of aluminum rather than foil sheilds. I know, since that is what I do for a living - design radios (well, radio test gear, which is a special case of the class Radio)
However, building a jamming oscillator at the needed frequencies to scramble this sign, while completely illegal, is also trivial - buy a cheap FM transmitter kit and retune it slightly. Of course, by causing interference you are in violation of FCC part 15 rules, and will get nailed if you get caught, so don't, 'mkay?
If it bothers you, just don't listen to the radio.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Seriously, what if the majority of riders are listening to truly non-commercial stations like student stations e.g. ones with voice id's like "WCBN 88.3 FM - at the far left of your radio dial" or "Radio Free Ann Arbor". Would the billboard show an ad for a state or city park or a free concert? Or just tell people to bike to work?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Garrison Keillor used to have a whole routine set up around the fact that he could mention who sponsored his programming, but that he wasn't supposed todisclose what they produced or turn it into a commercial. He used to joke around for a minute on Prairie Home Companion about 'This Program brought to you by Cargill' and then guess (wrongly with humour) about what products Cargill might possibly produce.
Now, Keillor and his ilk just rattle out a whole ditty for each corporate sponsor, written by that sponsor, often a regular commercial for whatever of their current products they want shilled.
A Good Intro to NetBS
As I refered to obliquely, about 50% of my listening is to my local NPR member. Here in Colorado, there's a similar split: an all classical music station, and a "News and Information" station that's really the "everything else" station. I'd be really happy if they set it up so I could give my donation to just the "News and Information" part. I've got nothing against Classical music; I just don't listen to it. Of course, then I'd be wishing they'd ditch the jazz and really do pure "News and Information".
Anyhow, by asking if anyone listened to taxpayer supported radio, I was actually trying to make a probably way too subtle point...
My local public radio station gets some high 90s percent of it's budget from listener contributions, which I beleive is typical. Most of their content comes from NPR or PRI, which in turn get almost all their funding from dues paid by the aforementioned local stations. Both at the local and national level, the public radio organizations get very small amounts of funding for specific purposes from competive government grants. Anyone can compete for these grants; there is no specific public radio funding in the US or Colorado budget.
So I don't think it's reasonable to call NPR "taxpayer supported radio". (You'd have a much better case for referring to Boeing as "taxpayer supported aviation", which I doubt the original poster is in the habit of doing.)
Thus, for (admittedly minor) humerous effect, I chose to pretend he was talking about the only actual "taxpayer supported radio" I know of: The US propaganda network Voice of America, which cheifly brodcasts overseas.
So now I've taken my original quick smart-ass post and competely beaten it into the ground. (Does that make this a long, dumb-ass post?)